FitzRoy found beds of putrid mussel shells still adhering to the rocks ten feet above high
water mark ... At Valparaiso, as I have remarked, similar shells are found at the height
of 1300 feet: it is hardly possible to doubt that this great elevation has been effected by
successive small uprisings, such as that which accompanied or caused the earthquake of this
year, and likewise by an insensibly slow rise, which is certainly in progress on some parts
of this coast.From Santiago Darwin embarked on a twenty-four-day expedition east across the
Andes towards Mendoza before returning to Valparaiso. Reaching a village outside
Santiago, where there were several pretty senoritas, he describes how they were
horrified at him entering a church without first praying, asking him ‘Why do you not
become a Christian – for our religion is certain?’ He assured them he was a sort of a
Christian (of the Anglican sort?). They then asked to him ‘Do not your padres, your
very bishops, marry?’ The absurdity of a bishop having a wife, particularly struck
them, and he describes how they scarcely knew whether to be amused or horror-struck
at such an enormity.
View of the Andes, from The Narrative of the Voyage of the Beagle, Wellcome LibraryClimbing up the western side of the Andes, Darwin was able apply his Lyellian
geological principles on a grand scale and wrote that he could see ‘manifest proofs of
excessive violence as the strata of the highest pinnacles are tossed about like crusts
of a broken pie’. Darwin finally reached the Continental Divide at 4000 metres above
sea level where even his mules had difficulty breathing. He describes the exertion
76 Where Australia Collides with Asia
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